Eurobarometer report 2013: E-Communications Household Survey

posted 19 Aug 2013, 03:24 by Costas Kalogiros

For this year's edition, emphasis has been placed on consumer perceptions of broadband speed, on the quality of experience of access services, on consumer affordability, on factors for subscribing and switching between communication service providers and on the transparency of tariff information.

More specifically, the main themes of
the summary are:the different types of telephone access
available to individuals and in the home, Internet access and its quality, penetration of communication service packages, consumer sensitivity to the speed of the
Internet connection,the quality of experience of communication
services, affordability of telephone and Internet services, the transparency of communication service
pricing, factors in switching Internet service
providers and service package providers and television access and means of reception.

Penetration rates of Electronic Communication Services
in the European Union

When broadband and
narrowband access are combined, approximately seven out of ten EU
households have home Internet access (68%). This proportion has increased by four percentage points since the 2012
report. The main
reasons are lack of interest (65%), cost (19%), and that either the respondent
or their household members did not know what the Internet was (7%).

Consumer sensitivity to Internet connection speed

The survey found
that nearly six out of ten respondents (57%) did not know the maximum download speed of their Internet connection.Furthermore,
nearly a quarter of the respondents who knew their download speed said that
their actual Internet download and upload speeds did not match the terms of
their contract.

The price and
technical features of the connection (maximum speed and download capacities)
are the main selection criteria when subscribing to an Internet connection. Overall, slightly
less than half of all respondents would be willing to change their Internet packages
for higher speed or greater downloading capacity (45%), broken down as follows:

29% of the
respondents would only change service provider to get a higher speed connection
for the same price,

5% would only pay more for a faster Internet connection
offered by their current Internet provider and

11% respondents would be willing
to move for either both options.

Quality of experience of communication access services

Slightly
less than three out of ten respondents had been blocked from accessing online
content or applications either often or sometimes while using the Internet from
home (29%). Furthermore, approximately four
in ten respondents (43%) either sometimes or often experienced difficulties
accessing online content and applications from home due to insufficient
Internet speed or downloading capacity.

On the other hand, the proportion of
respondents who reported that access to online content or applications is
sometimes blocked on their mobile phones has slightly increased to 20% from 16% in the previous report. Furthermore, around
four in ten respondents thought their mobile Internet connection provider was
responsible for blocking content (37%) and more than three in ten thought the
application or content provider was responsible (32%). Approaching one in five
respondents believed they were blocked from accessing content due to geographical
copyright restrictions (17%) or by the manufacturer of their mobile phone
(15%).

Affordability

Over half of EU
citizens limit their national and international mobile phone calls because of concerns about cost (respectively 55% and
54%). Around one-third
of EU citizens (34%) use the Internet to make cheap phone calls (using voice
over IP technologies), which is a seven percentage points increase since the
2012 report.

Price transparency and switching service package
providers

Slightly less than
one third of EU citizens disagree that it is easy to compare the terms of service packages (29%), a 3-point increase
since the 2012 Eurobarometer report. More than four in
ten respondents reported that they have considered changing their bundle
provider (42%), a nine percentage point increase since the previous survey (33%).